Today I invite you join me on a hill-walking challenge in Kensington. The most well-known hill locally is Notting Hill, but that's a mere bump whereas I'll be tackling a proper summit and taking you to the very top of Campden Hill, a full 42 metres above sea level. Here it is on a topographic map, a raw bruise to the east of Holland Park, entirely untroubled by public transport. [1872 map][2024 map]
Campden Hill rises to the south of Notting Hill Gate, slotted inbetween Holland Park (the park) and Kensington Church Street. It's named after a baronet from Chipping Campden, Baptist Hicks, who built himself a house on open farmland here in the early 17th century. The land was sold off for housing in the 1820s, generally very grand housing with several acres of estate, and has been redeveloped much more densely over the years without ever losing its exclusivity. Thus on today's walk we'll be passing the former houses of poets, philosophers, photographers and detective novelists, even a bouffant Sixties chanteuse, as we climb up to the roof of Kensington.
The best place to set up base camp is on Kensington High Street, a mere 21m above sea level, where you can stock up on vital provisions before striking out for the summit. The nearest food outlet to the start of the ascent is the Orée boulangerie where a small strawberry tartlet will set you back £6.40, or if you prefer something sturdier for your backpack Holland and Barratt do a varied line in oaty flapjacks. I planned carefully and found Kensington Farmers' Market in full flow beside the Central Library, brimming over with sourdough loaves, shiitake trays and bone broth options, not to mention gourmet delights from the Tiny Fungi Wellness Shop. Come on a Sunday if you want to mingle with the smartly-dressed locals.
The mountain trail we seek is called Campden Hill Road, appropriately enough, and wends half a mile uphill from an access point between Santander and Amazon Fresh. Clues to the relative poverty of the local population can be found in the window of Dexters estate agents where the cheapest property starts at £1½m and weekly rents range from £692 to £8000. The path ahead is clear, a steady climb between three-storey stucco villas and the brick bulwarks of Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall, all overshadowed by a line of luscious plane trees. Poet Sir Henry Newbolt is the walk's first recipient of a blue plaque, perhaps best known for "Play up! play up! and play the game!" and less so for dying here in 1938.
The first significant point of interest is a peculiar five-way road junction at the apex of the Phillimore Estate. Several benches have been provided, allowing you to take a well-earned break after six metres of breath-taking ascent, and perhaps to look back down towards the foothills of lower Kensington. Overseeing all this is Campden Hill Court, a cupola-topped redbrick Victorian monster and one of the first steel-framed mansion blocks to be built in central London. It sprawls across the former gardens of Sir James South, a reclusive astronomer who invited Isambard Kingdom Brunel to help supervise the building of a dome to house his twelve-inch telescope, hence named his home Observatory House. After his death the house was replaced by an utterly elegant curve of villas called Observatory Gardens, although in the 1990s everything behind the facade was hollowed out to create luxury flats with underground parking and everyone now has much nicer taps than you've got.
The further you climb the posher it gets. 1 Campden Hill is an Edwardian Arts and Crafts mansion formerly occupied by the Uruguayan ambassador and then put on the market for £75m because, unusually for up here, it has architectural panacheand a huge back garden. Nextdoor to this current building site is the Nigerian High Commission with limos and diplomatic vehicles crammed in out front, and admittedly we are now following the contours of the hill rather than climbing it but if you've never seen infamous comprehensive Holland Park School in the flesh, look there it is. Sheffield Terrace on the hill's eastern flank is also worth a brief visit because Agatha Christie lived at number 58 between 1934 and 1941, tapping away at the manuscript for Death On The Nile in her sparse ground floor workroom. One of her many blue plaques marks it out.
We're nearly at the summit now, the weary climb approaching its end, and as the road finally levels out the housing becomes more diverse. Some are quaint old things, others monstrous thin villas, some modern white confections with squared-off sun terraces and others looks like someone let a bunch of Seventies architects loose. The block of flats where the Grand Junction Waterworks, its reservoir and its chimney used to be is called Kensington Heights, because prosaically that's what this is. Another nod to our lofty elevation is the Windsor Castle pub, supposedly named because it had sight of that royal residence when it was built in 1826, before mass intermediate development concealed Berkshire for good. Feel free to nip in for a beer and a bowl of Timperley Rhubarb & Apple Crumble with vanilla creme anglaise to celebrate your conquest of the hilltop.
But the precise summit is a tad further away along Aubrey Walk, the ridgetop road. This is delightful, or at least the side that wasn't the waterworks is delightful because the other's been infilled with deluxe gated hideaways. What stands out is St George's, a lofty Gothic pile in polychrome brick, which stands pretty much where the Ordnance Survey trig point would be if only there was one. I note they host immersive French lessons for babies on Wednesday mornings, which perhaps says a lot about the disposable income of the local parish. Keep walking and there are late Georgian terraces, cute cottages, repurposed workshops, even a K2 phone kiosk with a ceramic rabbit in it, also the white-fronted townhouse where Dusty Springfield lived at the end of the 60s. It's easy to see why people would pay a fortune to live here - and AubreyHouse at the far end was indeed the most expensive house ever to be sold in London when it was bought by a publisher in 1997.
To end the walk we need to return to the flatlands again, and this is done via a single short descent of Aubrey Road. You could alternatively descend via Campden Hill Square nextdoor, skirting its central verdant rectangle because that's strictly off-limits to mere non-residents, but Aubrey Road'll get you down in just a couple of minutes. Several of its properties are being reimagined by new wealthy owners (one by a company called Basement Force), others boast private parking along a squeezed sliproad, and this is not what you expect to find a stone's throw from busy Holland Park Avenue. At the foot of the hill turn right for Notting Hill Gate, aim straight ahead for Ladbroke Grove or (for the quickest escape by tube) turn left for Holland Park, the lowest of them all. I hesitate to say Campden Hill is hiding in plain sight, but its residents sorely hope ramblers and climbers will never notice it's there.
